


Creatures Conditioned

by ephemeralstar



Category: The Cabin in the Woods (2011)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drug-Induced Sex, F/M, Gaslighting, Mind Manipulation, Mind/Mood Altering Substances, Sci-Fi Drugging and Mind Manipulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:02:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24841234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ephemeralstar/pseuds/ephemeralstar
Summary: Marty and Dana were put on this Earth to do more than just die; they will dance a little puppet dance.
Relationships: Marty Mikalski/Dana Polk
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	Creatures Conditioned

The doors don't open, but the world doesn't end. 

"It appears," the Director makes an announcement, her voice cool, ringing through the entire facility, through the glass cage Marty and Dana are huddled in, "the Ancient Ones are... _sated_ ," and she savours the word like she feels it herself, feels the power and the pleasure radiating from the Ancient Gods residing just beneath the crust of the Earth they sat so delicately upon. "Good show," she adds pointedly, and though Dana and Marty don't know it, she's speaking directly to them. The cage they found themselves in has stopped, and through the glass they can see an endless darkess ahead, and an enormous snake behind, that keeps throwing itself at the glass, trying to get at them. Each time it's massive, scaly body hits, the thud shakes their own cage, and Dana, exhausted and powerless, just sobs. 

"So what does this mean?" In the control room, Hadley turns to Sitterson, blank confusion on his face, finally looking away from the bloody, shivering pair trapped in the glass case, "do we have to find a new cage for The Buckners?"

"They aren't going to like that," Sitterson shakes his head, tapping away at his keyboard, switching cameras to the ones in and around the cabin. 

"Judah's gonna need some _serious_ plastic surgery," Hadley adds, grimacing at the memory of the pile of flesh they'd seen fall into the glass cage with Marty and Dana.

Before long, however, there's a message from The Director; _The Buckner's have outlived their usefulness._ As the sun begins to rise above the facility, everyone in the facility seems to be watching with abject horror as _The Buckners_ , what's left of them, seem to melt in the sunlight, the magic that had been holding them to this reality finally leaving them, and their long-dead bodies finally succumbing to their truly decomposed states. 

In the glass cage, Dana and Marty talk, trying to escape, to figure out where they are, _why they're here_ , but with little success. Walls that held The Buckners, that hold innumerable more powerful creatures than two twenty-somethings, are unyielding. The massive snake has not looked away from them, but is coiled, hissing occasionally, rarely blinking. Marty is watching it. Dana is scratching the blood from her hands. The numerous wounds that litter her skin ache, the adrenaline having left her hours ago. The waiting is it's own kind of terrifying.

" _Everyone who has survived has earned their place_." The disembodied voice is familiar, cool and emotionless, and Dana almost jumps a foot in the air. The snake gives a start at her sudden movement, and starts throwing itself at the glass again. Marty, wide-eyed watches as a gas is sprayed into the snake's cage, and it almost immediately becomes docile. 

" _What the fuck_ ," he hisses, looking suddenly to Dana, who shares his horrified expression. They start hollering questions, insults, threats, but the voice does not acknowledge any of their words. 

" _Soon, you will come to realize what place_ you've _earned. You will be doing the Gods' work._ " 

Much, _much_ later, it feels like days, like weeks; Dana and Marty are hungry, feel starved, feel ravenous and desperate, about ready to start gnawing on each other, the glass starts to move. They'd been kept in bright fluorescents the whole time, the cage _cold_ , airconditioned, which would have been to keep The Buckners from decomposing too badly, but now just served to heighten Marty and Dana's discomfort. The cage moves and there's a _hiss_ in the air. Marty hears it first, uncomfortably sober, and sees the gas in the air.

" _Dana!_ " He shouts her name, though his voice is hoarse, but it's too late for both of them, the world becoming blurry and dreamy around them, and they become compliant. A ladder comes down when they finally stop moving. _C_ _limb the ladder;_ they climb. They're lead down slate grey hallways to a comfortable beige room, smelling of vanilla, though they can't smell anything apart from themselves. A shower, warm and inviting, and they're stripped and scrubbed, comfortably warm and compliant still. Someone hands they bathrobes, and they cling to each other once they're dry, afraid of the unsmiling attendants along the way. 

"We're not going to hurt you," the disembodied voice from before now has a face, a smile; an older woman with dark hair and dark eyes, wearing a sharp grey suit. Dana and Marty can barely form words in response, "we're _proud_ of you." She tells them earnestly, hand reaching out to gently brush Marty's cheek. He jerks away from her touch, like a child away from fire, and Dana holds him close.

"What did you do to us?" Dana asks, though it takes her a few tries. The woman smiles, gestures further into the room, reiterating that they're not going to be hurt. Marty and Dana, at her insistence, step further into the room. It's like a hotel, all soft linen and gold light, two double beds. Dana and Marty sit on one, and the woman sits on the other, looking entirely out of place. 

"We just wanted you to be happy, to make sure you felt safe and comfortable with us."

"You killed our friends." Marty spits, and the woman sighs gently.

"You and your friends saved the world," she tells them, and in this moment, in this laboratory-induced haze of comfort, and days without food, Dana and Marty feel their paper thin resolve crumbling, "the things that hurt - that _killed_ your friends, they're gone, thanks to your two. They were part of a ritual, a terrible, _terrible_ ritual, but now, thanks to the two of you, it's changed." And she sounds so sincere that they can't help but believe her. 

"Why are we here?" Dana asks, the barest shake in her voice, and the woman's expression turns fond and knowing.

"You're here to be fed and taken care of; we're so sorry it's taken so long."

Like they'd been summoned, a series of servers pushing silver trolleys file into the room quickly, lining up before the starving pair, smelling of well seasoned, perfectly cooked food. The scent alone breaks through the haze in their minds, and Dana and Marty launch themselves at the trays before their lids had even been lifted, startling all but the woman sitting across from them. They forgo cutlery, tearing into the food with their hands, eating until they're sick, and then cramming more food in.

Animals, the pair of them, a mess of grunts and off-puttingly wet eating sounds, they share the food with each other; Dana takes a handful of mash potato, and after a single bite, is insistently shoving it at Marty's mouth until he's eaten the rest, licking the remnants off of her fingers. It fills something primal in them, to be touching each other and the food, and the servers leave quickly. The woman across from them watches like she's studying wildlife, but Marty and Dana have all but forgotten she's there. There's certainly something laced in with the food, the chem department leaving nothing to chance. Like low-grade heroin, it's close to an instant hit of serotonin, gives them the satisfaction they'd been craving that food rarely, truly brings. 

They're not coordinated enough to reach the bathroom by the time they're ill, creatures acting on instinct, they're sick on the floor before eating again, but the woman doesn't seem bothered. By the time they've eaten enough that they themselves are sated, laying back, unashamed, bathrobes smeared with food, hurriedly from trying to wipe one course's remnants off before diving into another. The woman stands, offers her perfectly clean hands to the both of them with a patient smile.

"Lets get you both cleaned up," and they follow her like commands like well tamed dogs, holding each other while she leads them back to the bathroom, laughing as they shower still wearing their robes, a little high from whatever was in the food. They slough off the sopping robes and rediscover each other, the slickness of their own skin beneath the warm water, the quiet noises of pain Dana makes when Marty's hands find the cuts along her body, the way Marty hisses at the reminder of the knife wound in his back. 

"You're okay," Dana mumbles against his shoulder, her vision blurry and skin singing with delight where he's touching her. The tiles are cool against her back where he's pushing her against the wall, pushing into her, "we're okay." _They're alive_ , and they've never felt it so strongly than in this moment, than together, entangled beneath the water in this unfamiliar room. They feel every sensation tenfold, desperate to remind themselves of their humanity, knowing instinctively that they're all the other has left.

"Is this how Jules died?" The words tumble from Marty's lips, and Dana's nails dig hard into his shoulders as she found herself slamming back into reality. After a beat, Marty seems to realize what he's said, and he's stumbling back, hand over his mouth, feeling sick all over again. " _Fuck_." Dana is heaving on all fours, shaking beneath the constant stream of water. 

"Is everything okay in there?" The woman from outside calls.

"Our friends are _fucking dead_ ," Marty snaps back, all teeth and tears, and the woman, unashamed, walks back in, apology on the tip of her tongue, their old clothes, clean and dry, in her hands. She promises, again, that their friends saved the world, and that they did too. After a moment of Marty's dubious glare, she gently puts the clothes down to the side.

"If you'd allow me, I'd like to take you to our medical team, you've both sustained some serious injuries; we just want to help."

"Why?" Dana asks, voice rough and angry, and the woman takes a deep breath.

"Because you were both made for great things," she pauses, and steps back to retrieve a new set of fluffy, white robes, "and we want to help you achieve them."

The door they stop at reads _Bio-Med,_ and something about it doesn't sit right with Dana or Marty, still clinging together, feeling lost and overwhelmed each time another unsmiling person in a suit and tie passes them by. All the woman will tell them is that they're in _The Facility_ , and that no-one will hurt them. They're left alone in a blindingly white room, both sitting gingerly on the edge of a single examination bed, tucked into one another, looking at the rows of drugs and medical equipment locked away in glass cabinets. 

The doctor who greets them smiles wide and bright. Dana goes quiet, suddenly nervous and untrusting, letting Marty speak for both of them. Marty hits him with a barrage of questions, which the doctor answers with ease, but his hands are cold when he pries them apart to examine their injuries, and Dana makes noises of distress. Marty holds himself back, but Dana squirms, seems to have been taken over by one of the many drugs that have secretly been administered to the pair, perhaps with a lower tollerance overall for any unusual substances. 

"Is it true?" Marty asks, wincing as something's injected near his stab wound. Dana's been given something that made her docile. Like the snake that threw itself against the glass, she'd coiled up, watching him, calm against her will.

"Is what true?" The doctor asks blithely.

"That we saved the world?"

"Yes, Marty, you and Dana saved the world."

"You know our names?"

"We all know your names."

When they get back to the beige room with the beds, all evidence of their binging feast had been removed, and the carpets were cleaned, the beds remade. Their clothes sit at the end of one. 

"We're getting your rooms sorted," the woman from before is back, still smiling, still pristine. Dana and Marty are holding hands, the world once more a soft haze for them; drowning in honey as they moved through The Facility.

"Who are you?" Dana asks, her head resting on Marty's shoulder, refusing to let him go, to move away.

"I'm the Director of The Facility," the woman answers, and Marty thinks he recalls the doctor mentioning The Director.

"Our great and shiny leader," Marty's surprisingly sarcastic for his state, but The Diretor doesn't take it to heart, "so what now?"

"Now we're getting your permanent room ready -"

"So now you're keeping us here? Like pets?" Marty sneers, and The Director regards him curiously, her pleasant smile falling for the first time. 

"We all must make sacrifices -"

"Like Jules and Curt and Holden?" Dana finally speaks up, defiant, lip trembling, "what sacrifices have you made? Huh? You can't keep us here."

"I have sacrificed," the Director's voice drops, raw and honest, as her expression turns dark, _"everything_ , Dana, things you cannot even begin to understand, to keep the world from ending." So she takes them to the sacrificial room, to the blood dried dark on the walls, explains everything to them, makes them look into the abyss where the Gods lay sleeping, sated. 

"That's my blood," Marty's words are half choked out as he looks up at the carving of the fool; realizing that every nightmare he's ever had is true, and still pretty out of it, he's starting to feel nauseous again. The Director confirms. She calls them special, calls them _the Ancient Ones' new favourites_. 

"When I say The Gods have smiled upon you, I quite literally mean it," she tells them with an uncompromising sincerity. 

Dana starts crying.

They get back to the room and The Director leaves them be, lets their new reality settle in. They sleep uneasily in the bed that's now too soft for what they're used too, afraid of the dark and the monsters they now know lurk there. The next day they are alone, apart from the servers that bring them food, though they're careful not to eat enough to be sick, though the food is still laced. They take comfort in each other as the days wear on with nothing and no-one else around, isolated and drugged up, occasionally visited by The Director, who just reiterates the same thing every time; The Facility and The Ancient Ones are proud of them, that they saved the world, and that they will be called upon to do so again.

"Why?" One time when the Director visits, Dana is asleep, her head pillowed on Marty's chest, frowning and twitching in her sleep, "why won't you just kill us? We're not you're fucking puppets." He spits, and the Director sighs deeply, her gaze gentle when she looks at Dana.

"You're special, Marty, you and Dana are special, and you're the sort of people who, when it comes down to it, will do what's best for humanity."

"No fucking way; if I did that, I wouldn't have gotten in that glass cage in the first place."

"It's a survival instinct; and now, when the time comes, what's best for humanity, and what's best for you and for her, will be one in the same."

"Us or them," Marty realises, with dawning horror. 

"That's a very basic way to put it, but yes." 

* * *

The room they're given _permanently_ turns out to be their glass cage, cleaned, smelling of disinfectant, looking like a prison; bed too small for two, metal toilet. Dana's throwing herself at the walls again when they close the trap door, screaming, her blood boiling, like the rug had been pulled from beneath her feet. Marty wants to join her, but by the time he's processed where they are _again_ , there's the telltale hiss of gas, and they're turning complacent in their steel and glass prison. 

Marty and Dana crawl into bed, weak and aching, traitorous eyes closing despite their best effort. Lad induced sleep, to be kept in stasis for months on end, until they're required once more. 

They awake suddenly, a month out from The Ritual, a full year later. The only creature comfort they're granted is good food, delivered daily to keep up their strength and pump them full of special chemicals, though none that alter their mind; The Facility wants them sharp. Something about the way they had been kept asleep had kept their muscles from atrophying, and just hours after awaking, Dana is pacing like a caged panther. It hadn't just been a drug trip. The nightmare is real.

Marty is fidgetting.

"Sit down."

"I can't." Dana pauses, wringing her hands, looking to him, "what happens now? What happened? How long do you think we've been here for?"

"Months," Marty answers flatly, "probably going to be either, like, training us, or the ritual thing is coming up."

"They'd just throw us out there, blind?" Dana asks, eyes wide.

"Sink or swim." Marty shrugs, and it's enough to startle a laugh from Dana, who hasn't felt this clear-headed since that night at the cabin, before all the terrible shit went down. _Sink or swim_ wasn't exactly what she'd expected from a world-ending murder cult.

"What if we sink?"

"Everyone dies, I guess."

* * *

This year, _Zombie Redneck Torture Family_ is replaced on the board by two words. _The Lovers_. 

"This feels cruel," Wendy begrudgingly hands her money over to Sitterson as he collects. 

"Is it still cruel if you're right?" He asks, all smug and unbearable. Wendy's lips flatten into an something unamused.

" _Especially_ if we're right," she tells him, and Sitterson calls to Hadley to write up the chem department for The Lovers. 

* * *

Marty's bong is the most modern item in the basement; stainless steel, it catches the light when the athlete is the first down the stairs. 

" _Holy shit, this is genius_ ," he says, eyes bright, lengthening and unlengthening the device, while the others all look around the room in nervous wonder. 

" _Finally,_ " the academic grabs it from him, " _someone in your family I actually relate to -_ "

" _Hey!_ " The athlete is offended for all of three seconds before the virgin offers weed enticingly and the rest of them are creeped out enough from the rest of the trinkets in the room to leave. 

Down below, Marty and Dana's cage begins to move, and the voice of The Director filters in to them.

"We're so sorry to have to do this to you again so soon, but we require your assistance." 

* * *

"Why do they do it? Why don't they just... just kill themselves or refuse, or run away...?" Wendy is distraught on behalf of Marty and Dana, who rise, hand in hand, each carrying a knife that had been provided.

"Self preservation?" Sitterson offers blithely, but Hadley snorts, shaking his head.

"Didn't you guys hear? First day here The Director herself took them for the grand tour; our little lovers have met The Ancient Ones," he says with his usual smugness, and Sitterson whistles low between his teeth, "they know _exactly_ what happens if they don't do what they're told."

* * *

"This makes us the bad guys, doesn't it?" Marty's voice is rough; its the first thing he's said since they'd started moving. Since they'd been chosen. Since the knives had been delivered. Dana gives his hand a squeeze, looking at the knife in her other, "they're not cultists, or the cause of whatever's about to happen; they're just like us. Like we were; they're just kids. Just stupid, innocent kids."

"You know what happens if we don't;" Dana's lip trembles despite her best efforts, "it's for the greater good."

"Or they could kill us; remember I _dismembered_ that fuckin' zombie, Dana." Marty mutters, but Dana doesn't look at him. 

"Marty," her voice is gentle, and he sighs deeply, "what other choice do we have? They chose how they wanted to die, just like we did."

"But they chose _us_." The last shred of his humanity shines in his eyes in the light of the fluorescents, and Dana finally looks to him, meets his gaze; they're shells of who they used to be.

"If we don't, everyone and everything we've ever loved will die." She tells him, and Marty slowly nods in defeat.

"Everyone but Jules, Curt, and Holden."

"They got it easy," Dana hears herself mutter, voice dark, but Marty snorts a quiet laugh, before he takes a deep breath, the Director's words coming back to him suddenly. _Us or them_.

"For the greater good." He parrots her words back at her, and Dana leans in to kiss him before the trap door opens.

And they do as they're told.


End file.
